Playful antics as Sullivan's duo get mixed up in lodging house

What better place to hear Sir Arthur Sullivan’s sublime music than River House, the villa at Walton where the composer would while away his summers, far from the smoke of London? It’s not hard to imagine his windows open and the sound of his piano drifting down to the river, writes Mark Bennett.

It’s harder to imagine Sir Arthur venturing much into the barn, unless he wanted to be intimate in the hay with his mistress, Mrs Ronalds. Nowadays the barn is painted and clean. There’s seating, electric light and emergency exits. It’s called Riverhouse and it’s the scene of intimate performances of quite another kind. Charles Court Opera, a group of young operatic types bristling with talent, scored energetically last week with Sullivan’s one-act Cox and Box, followed by a second-half comprising some of the lollipops from Sullivan’s collaborations with WS Gilbert. Cox and Box is a gem, an earlier work written a few years before Sullivan met Gilbert. It was his very first stage work. His librettist was FC Burnand, not on the same level as Gilbert but capable of amusingly strangled lyrics. The plot revolves around Mr Cox, a hatter (played by the exotically-named Sebastian Rex Valentine) and Mr Box, a printer (John Savournin, also the director). Unknown to them, they are sharing the same room in the lodging house of Sergeant Bouncer (Phil Canner). As one gets up and goes to work, the other comes in and goes to sleep. They discover each other. Bouncer has some explaining to do. Sullivan’s accompaniment to these antics is playful yet masterly, and deserves to be heard. Though musical director Tommy Harrington is clearly a playful master in the making, I felt he occasionally went at his piano like a stenographer taking down a racing commentary. You could almost hear Sir Arthur’s shade whispering “slow down, young man!” The highlight was Mr Box’s lullaby to a rasher of bacon, beautifully rendered by Savournin. The gentlemen were joined in the second half by Felicity Hayward, who sang a fetching Yum Yum from The Mikado, a coquettish Josephine from Pinafore and a bloodthirsty Dame Carruthers from Yeomen of the Guard.